Faculty of Arts
Department of Communication, Media and Film
Communication
Be Credible
This book teaches college-level journalism and strategic communication students to become information experts.
Licence: CC BY-NC
Business Communications
Students will learn how to analyze context and audience, determine purpose, message content, visual design and media in order to create written workplace messages that can be received, understood, used and retrieved with speed and accuracy.
Licence: CC BY
Business Communications 2
This course explores the many strategies and methods one might employ to ensure important messages are communicated in a professional manner. This course establishes business communication fundamentals such as delivering bad news, writing informational reports, creating persuading messages, designing and delivering professional presentations, and preparing for employment searches.
Licence: CC BY
Communication in the Real World: An Introduction to Communication Studies
This book overviews the time-tested conceptual foundations of the field, while incorporating the latest research and cutting-edge applications of these basics. Each chapter will include timely, concrete, and real-life examples of communication concepts in action.
Licence: CC BY-NC-SA
Communication Theory
This Wikibook is an introduction to communication theory — the theory of how humans share, encode, and decode what they know, what they need, and what they expect from each other.
Licence: CC BY-SA
Digital Photography for Graphic Communications
The purpose of this book is to serve as a reference for a one-semester course in digital photography for graphic communications. Since digital cameras have mostly replaced colour scanners, graphic communicators need to capture images for use in magazines, catalogs, brochures, packages, signs, banners—all forms of printed materials—and also for eBooks, web sites, and apps. It is based on a 2009 print book by the authors that was called Digital Photography for Print and published by the Printing Industries of America (PIA) Press.
Licence: CC BY
A Guide to Technical Communications: Strategies & Applications
This open textbook was designed for Engineering Technical Communications courses at The Ohio State University.
Licence: CC BY-NC
Information Strategies for Communicators
The definitive text for the information search and evaluation process as practiced by news and strategic communication message producers.
Licence: CC BY
Interpersonal Communication: A Mindful Approach to Relationships
This book helps readers examine their own one-on-one communicative interactions using a mindfulness lens and incorporating the latest communication theory and research to help students navigate everyday interpersonal interactions. The book cover topics typically taught in an undergraduate interpersonal communication course: family interactions, interpersonal dynamics, language, listening, nonverbal communication, and romantic relationships, as well as exploring emerging areas such as self-compassion, body positivity, friendships, and “the dark side”.
Licence: CC BY-BC-SA
Key Concepts in Surveillance Studies
A student-authored glossary highlighting twenty-six key concepts in Surveillance Studies. For each concept, the student provided a concise definition of the concept that makes its connection to surveillance studies clear and provided an example.
Licence: CC BY-NC-SA
Management Communication
From the Marriott School of Business at Brigham Young University, this open textbook addresses business communication which is concise, direct, clear, and compelling.Communication is the heart of business. Short emails, complex reports, private chats, impassioned pitches, formal presentations, and team meetings move information and ideas around an organization, define strategy, and drive decisions.
Licence: CC BY-SA
Organizational Communication
This textbooks helps students demonstrate an understanding of key topics and concepts, including communication networks, media management, organizational culture and climate, intercultural communication, meetings management, ethical communication, assessing communication quality, and crisis communication – and the impact of social technologies.
Licence: CC BY-SA
STEM Foundations
This course offers practice using workplace communication, with activities designed to strengthen skills in preparation for entering a college program in a STEM career.
Licence: CC BY-NC-SA
WISC-Online Communication Learning Objects
A collection of learning objects on various communication topics.
Licence: CC BY-NC
Write Like a PR Pro
Write Like a PR Pro covers how to write and develop messages in different formats from professionals with expertise in different areas of communication. It was written by an instructor who teaches at The Ohio State University.
Licence: CC BY-NC
Communication and Culture
Antigone by Sophocles [New]
Written by Sophocles circa 441 BC, Antigone is an Athenian tragedy. Of the three Theban plays, Antigone is the third in order of the events depicted in the plays, but was the first to be written. The reading order of the Theban plays is: Oedipus Rex, followed by Oedipus at Colonus and ending with Antigone [Description from resource].
Includes: audiobook
Licence: CC 0 (Public Domain)
Myths of the Greek and Roman Gods [New]
Edited by Roberto Nickel, this collection of myths of Greek and Roman gods includes extracts from the Homer’s Odessey and Iliad and Hesiod’s Theogony and Works and Days, Aeschylus’ complete Prometheus Bound, and more.
Licence: CC BY 4.0
The Nicomachean Ethics by Aristotle [New]
The Nicomachean Ethics (circa 322 BC) is an ethical treatise by Aristotle. In the text, Aristotle offers a defence of the idea of eudaimonism (human flourishing or happiness) which is achieved as a result of human choice in search of excellence and the good life [Description from resource].
Licence: CC 0 (Public Domain)
The Odyssey by Homer [New]
The Odyssey (originally composed in the 8th or 7th century BCE; published in English in 1614) is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems by Homer. The story follows the Greek hero Odysseus, king of Ithaca, and his journey home after the Trojan War. The poem is divided into 24 books and is one of the oldest existing works of literature still read by contemporary audiences [Description from resource].
Licence: CC 0 (Public Domain)
Oedipus at Colonus by Sophocles [New]
Written shortly before Sophocles’s death in 406 BC and produced by his grandson (also called Sophocles) at the Festival of Dionysus in 401 BC, Oedipus at Colonus (also known as Oedipus Coloneus) is one of the three Theban plays. Of the three Theban plays, Oedipus at Colonus is the second in order of the events depicted in the plays, but was the last to be written. The reading order of the Theban plays is: Oedipus Rex, followed by Oedipus at Colonus and ending with Antigone [Description from resource].
Includes: audiobook
Licence: CC 0 (Public Domain)
Oedipus Rex by Sophocles [New]
Written by Sophocles and first performed around 429 BC, Oedipus Rex, also known by its Greek title, Oedipus Tyrannus, or Oedipus the King, is an Athenian tragedy. Originally, to the ancient Greeks, the title was simply Oedipus, as it is referred to by Aristotle in Poetics. Of the three Theban plays, Oedipus Rex is the first in order of the events depicted in the plays, but was the second to be written. The reading order of the Theban plays is: Oedipus Rex, followed by Oedipus at Colonus and ending with Antigone [Description from resource].
Includes: audiobook
Licence: CC 0 (Public Domain)
Poetics by Aristotle [New]
Poetics (circa 335 BC) by Aristotle is the earliest surviving work of dramatic theory and the first surviving philosophical essay to focus on literary theory. Aristotle divides the art of poetry into three genres: verse drama (to include comedy, tragedy, and the satyr play); lyric poetry; and epic. These genres all share the function of mimesis, or imitation of life, but differ in three ways: 1. Differences in music rhythm, harmony, meter and melody; 2. Difference of goodness in the characters; 3. Difference in how the narrative is presented: telling a story or acting it out [Description from resource].
Includes: audiobook
Licence: CC 0 (Public Domain)
Public Domain Core Collection [New]
Includes fiction and non-fiction public domain works that have been adapted for post-secondary use through Pressbooks. This collection is a collaborative project between Ryerson and Brock universities. Many of the works include audiobook recordings as well.
Licence: Public Domain
Public Domain Core Collection Faculty Guide [New]
This guide has been created to assist instructors in using the Public Domain Core Collection of texts and to provide some suggestions and examples of open assignments that can be created using these texts [Description from resource].
Licence: CC BY 4.0
Republic by Plato [New]
Republic (circa 375 BC) is a Socratic dialogue by Plato. The text explores topics like justice, the order and character of the just city-state, and the just man. It is one of the most influential works of philosophy and political theory—both intellectually and historically—in the world, thus marking it as Plato’s best-known work [Description from resources].
Includes: audiobook
Licence: CC 0 (Public Domain)
Film Studies
The Altering Eye: Contemporary International Cinema
The Altering Eye covers a “golden age” of international cinema from the end of WWII through to the New German Cinema of the 1970s. Combining historical, political, and textual analysis, Kolker develops a pattern of cinematic invention and experimentation from neorealism through the modernist interventions of Jean-Luc Godard and Rainer Werner Fassbinder, focusing along the way on such major figures as Luis Buñuel, Joseph Losey, the Brazilian director Glauber Rocha, and the work of major Cuban filmmakers.
Licence: CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 (Note: This is an open access text which restricts remixing and adapting).
Exploring Movie Construction and Production: What’s so Exciting about Movies?
This open textbook contains eight chapters of the major areas of film construction and production, including: theme; genre; narrative structure’ character portrayal; story; plot; directing style; cinematography; and editing.
Includes: Assignments, vocabulary
Licence: CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
Film and the City: The Urban Imaginary in Canadian Cinema
Examining fourteen Canadian films produced from 1989 to 2007, including Denys Arcand’s Jésus de Montréal (1989), Jean-Claude Lauzon’s Léolo (1992), Mina Shum’s Double Happiness (1994), Clément Virgo’s Rude (1995), and Guy Maddin’s My Winnipeg (2007), Film and the City is the first comprehensive study of Canadian film and “urbanity”—the totality of urban culture and life. Please note that while available for free download, this book is not licensed for edits.
Licence: CC BY-NC-ND 2.5 CA
Film Appreciation
This open textbook covers narration, film history, mise-on-scène, cinematography, editing, sound, genre, writing film analysis.
Includes: Embedded video, glossary
Licence: CC BY 4.0
Moving Pictures: An Introduction to Cinema
A free and open-source introduction to the art and science of moving pictures, offering in-depth exploration of how cinema communicates, and what, exactly, it is trying to say.
Includes: Embedded film clips as examples
Licence: CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
Reviews: Available through the Open Textbook Library
Media Studies
Foundations in Visual Media Production
This textbook is designed as an introduction to the process of producing visual media.
Licence: CC BY-SA
Humans R Social Media
Social media and humans exist in a world of mutual influence, and humans play central roles in how this influence is mediated and transferred. Originally created by University of Arizona Information scholar Diana Daly, this Third Edition of the book Humans R Social Media uses plain language and features contributions by students to help readers understand how we as humans shape social media, and how social media shapes our world in turn.
Licence: CC BY
Media Programming
The Media Programming course contextualizes the task of programming by focusing on media, such as images, audio, and interactive systems. By doing so, we hope to put programming in a relevant context. For example, iteration is a programming concept that is essential to creating negative and grayscale images. You will learn algorithms for blending two images together and how hierarchical relationships are used to organize elements of a user interface.
Licence: CC BY-NC-SA
Social Media & the Self
Social Media & the Self is intended to serve students enrolled in media and communication courses…It’s an open reader: a collection of works available on the open web, selected and ordered with university courses in mind. Each of its component works already carries an open access license, or—in the case of copyrighted items—links to a web version (description from resource).
Licence: CC BY-NC
The Social Media Reader
This book covers a wide-ranging topical terrain, much like the internet itself, with particular emphasis on collaboration and sharing, the politics of social media and social networking, Free Culture and copyright politics, and labour and ownership. Theorizing new models of collaboration, identity, commerce, copyright, ownership, and labor, these essays outline possibilities for cultural democracy that arise when the formerly passive audience becomes active cultural creators, while warning of the dystopian potential of new forms of surveillance and control.
Licence: CC BY-NC-SA
Trends in Digital and Social Media
Social media and other digital devices have entered our collective bloodstream. This e-book touches upon the human experience of contemporary trends that affect how we perceive ourselves, others, and society.
Licence: CC BY-SA
Visual Communication
A general education textbook for the study of visual rhetoric and the use of visual media as a means for conveying information to an audience. In particular, we will limit our attention to the use of still imagery because of the vast, openly available repositories of visual media and the simplicity of manipulating them.
Licence: CC BY-NC-SA
Please refer to the Libraries and Cultural Resources (LCR) Staff Directory to connect with a librarian supporting this subject area.
Know of an open educational resource (OER) not listed?
Contact us at oer@ucalgary.ca.
Already using an OER? Have you adapted or created an OER?
Let us know by completing the OER Adoption and Creation Sharing Form